Vignettes from the Serengeti
by Vierge
Summary: [G1] Hound will never forget his time in the Serengeti – nor will he forget the human woman who made it all the more special for him.
1. Twilight

**Vignettes from the Serengeti**

_By: Vierge_

DISCLAIMER: _Transformers _belongs to Hasbro/Takara, but I do own Adelaide "Addy" Rowan. Anything else I might have missed belongs to respective owners.

NOTES: What I know about the Elephant Listening Project, Seronera, and the Serengeti National Park are gleaned entirely from the Internet. If I make a mistake in my portrayal of them or of their policies, I would wish to plead Artistic License, and beg the pardon of those who know better.

RATING: T/PG-13 (applicable for most of the vignettes except for one that may be closer to a soft R; that one may be posted separately under a different rating)

SUMMARY: (G1) Hound will never forget his time in the Serengeti – nor will he forget the human woman who made it all the more special for him.

* * *

**I. Twilight**

It was late afternoon on the Serengeti, and though the night was following quickly on its heels, life did not cease to move by any means.

The sun was an orange orb setting in the distance, the hot air rising from the ground in shimmering waves making the image swim. Occasionally, giraffes would cut into his line of sight, their long necks standing out as slender, elegant silhouettes against the sun. In the distance, he could hear the quiet roar of lions, and underneath that, if he adjusted his audios enough, he could also make out the deep, steady drone of the elephants that he and his partner were following.

A familiar hand touched his leg, and he refocused his optics to the human woman standing next to him. The gathering dark required him to focus his optics once again to see her clearly, but when he did, he could see the smile on her face as she looked up at him.

"Are you alright, Hound?" Her voice was low and rich, a sound that, he assumed, came with maturity. She was, after all, well into her thirties, though many would say that she looked older - the result of being outside at almost all hours of the day in nearly all weather conditions.

He smiled back at her, wondering if she could see it. "Yes, I'm fine."

Her face grew concerned. "No word on the ones you've been keeping a lookout for?"

He shook his head this time. "No, and thank Primus for that!"

She laughed, and leaned companionably against him, her eyes focused on the setting sun. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yes," he replied quietly, watching as the last crimson sliver finally disappeared beyond the horizon, allowing the stars to come out in their full glory.

He tilted his head so that his optics could take in the full dome of the sky. Somewhere, out in those wide, vast, dark spaces, was Cybertron, wandering through the galaxy, and still under Decepticon control. It made his spark dim a little, to recall that his home planet was in enemy control, but at the same time, there was a quiet sort of thankfulness. If he and his fellow Autobots had not been forced off of Cybertron, after all, then they would never have discovered Earth, and he would not have the pleasure of sitting out here, in the wild, beautiful African savannah.

If they had not come here, he would never have met her.

Her name was Adelaide Rowan, Addy as she was called by her friends and colleagues at the Seronera settlement. She was a part of the Elephant Listening Project, which was trying to understand how elephants communicated with one another through ultra-low frequency sound waves. That was why she was here: to help in the project by following a herd of elephants that roamed Serengeti National Park.

As for Hound... Well, that was a bit more complicated. He was here as a scout, to watch out for any Decepticon activity in and around the area of Mount Kilimanjaro. However, since he could not give any outward indication of his presence in the area, he decided that he would volunteer his services to the researchers and staff who worked in the park. His jeep alt-mode, after all, was the most practical mode of travel across the savannah.

And that was why he was here with Addy. The other park rangers and researchers had been a bit troubled by the idea of having a sentient vehicle that could also transform into a mechanical biped, but Addy didn't seem at all threatened by it. In fact, she welcomed his company, claiming to look forward to having someone to talk to on her long, lonely circuit around the vast savannah to follow the elephant herd she had been assigned to.

So far as Hound could tell, her words back at Seronera when they had first set out were ringing true.

"You can't count all the stars in one night, Hound."

The amused tone of her voice brought Hound's attention back to her, and he realized then that his CPU had been wandering. "Sorry," he replied sheepishly. "I was thinking about home."

"Home... You mean Cybertron?"

"Yes." The two of them had talked a lot, mostly during the quiet lulls when the elephants were sleeping and they did not have to monitor the equipment. In that span of time, Hound had learned about her family and life in England, while she learned about Cybertron, the Autobots, and the long, long war they had been waging against the Decepticons. Now, Addy knew as much about the war as Spike, Sparkplug and Carly, despite not being directly involved.

Hound preferred it to stay that way.

She nodded once, her eyes lifted to watch the stars as well, and for a while, they shared a moment of silent communion, joined only in their contemplation of the heavens above.

After a while, though, she straightened, and gestured towards the small campfire she had built to keep herself warm. The smile she gave Hound was welcoming, understanding. "Care to sit with me?"

Hound smiled back, and though he did not need the warmth from the fire, joined her anyway.


	2. Stampede

**II. Stampede**

She was a good shot.

No, he amended then; she was an _incredible_ shot - for a human, at any rate.

She sat down hard, panting heavily as she reloaded her rifle with more tranquilizer darts. "One more," she muttered. "Just one more..."

It started out as a fairly routine day for them. They broke camp early in the morning, and were off after the herd just as the sun was beginning to rise. Though they talked while they were on the move, they kept quiet when they stopped to record the low-frequency sounds that the elephants made to communicate with one another over long distances. The equipment she was using was extremely sensitive, and the last thing either of them wanted to do was to skew the results with speech or engine-rumbles. Instead, Hound applied his own sensors to the task, coming up with recordings that he would later share with her, as a point of comparison with her own recordings. Cybertronian sensors, after all, were more sensitive than human-made ones, and she was able to get results that she normally would have found out only when she brought the recordings back to the lab.

But all of that had to be cut violently short when a small group of young bull elephants suddenly started charging at them with a rage that Hound never imagined could exist in other life-forms on Earth outside of humans. An astrosecond later, he knew that they had to _move_, or they would be crushed - or rather, _she_ would.

"Addy! Get in here now!"

But apparently, Addy had other ideas. The moment she heard the telltale trumpeting sound, she reached into a long metal box that she had placed in the back, and pulled out what looked like a rifle, but she loaded it with ammunition the likes of which Hound had never encountered before. Not a moment later, she had lifted the firearm, and pulled the trigger. It made a soft hissing sound, nothing like the other human firearms that Hound had encountered. Something small and colorful - a dart, Hound realized - flew from the other end of the gun, and found its mark in the neck of the lead elephant, which slowed gradually before coming to a stop to kneel on the ground.

But the other elephants just ran around their erstwhile companion, and kept on charging.

That was the reason they were in their current situation: racing between acacia trees, with Hound doing the driving so that Addy could shoot down the elephants that were chasing them. After asking Hound to radio for help, she managed to down two more elephants with as many darts, missing only once when a bird just had to fly into her line of sight. There was just one more elephant, but she had to wait until she got a clear-enough shot, because they were currently running through a copse of trees and many of the branches were in the way.

And then she found it: an opening between the trees, just wide enough for her to see the elephant's gray skin as it passed by on the other side. She didn't let herself hesitate. She lifted the gun, and shot.

Hound did not feel her relax until that last elephant went down on its knees on the ground, as if drained of all its rage.

"Circle back," she murmured wearily as she set aside the gun. "We have to check on them, make sure that they aren't injured."

Hound did as she asked him, but it did leave him wondering as to why they would check on them when she had so recently shot them down in order to escape. "Why?"

"I have to make sure that they aren't reacting badly to the tranquilizer," she answered. "Until the park rangers get here, the elephants are our responsibility."

As they drove back to check up on the elephants, Addy explained to him what had just happened: young bull elephants had a tendency to get particularly violent and territorial, a phenomenon that had been on the rise as of late because many of the older bull elephants were being killed by poachers for their tusks. Without the older males to keep them in check and to act as examples (elephants, so she said, were like humans in that they learned much from example), the younger ones did not know how to properly handle the increase in hormones that came with maturity. This led to violent, unchecked rages against anything that happened to cross their territory, sometimes extending to other elephants.

"I'm rather glad that they charged at us instead of at the herd," she murmured when she finally heard the soft thudding that was the trademark sound of an incoming helicopter. "The little one wouldn't have survived."

Hound knew that she was referring to the baby elephant born only a few weeks ago. He sighed. "I know you're fond of the baby, but you could have been killed back there."

She laughed softly, and ran a hand on his dashboard. "Why Hound, I didn't know you were so concerned about my well-being."

Truth be told, neither had he.


	3. Cycles

**III. Cycles**

His olfactory sensors had already told him what was coming, even from several miles away. A couple more miles, and he could tell, from the way her hands tightened on his steering wheel, that Addy knew, too.

It had been months since they left Seronera, and through all that time, their contact with human civilization had been minimal. Neither of them had had to worry about sources of fuel or water: Addy had brought a substantial amount of water and fuel, for herself in the form of food rations, and for Hound in the form of diesel. Whenever they ran low, she directed Hound to certain points - usually a rock formation or a cluster of trees - where the park rangers cached important supplies like water, food and vehicle fuel.

But they needed water right at that moment, and the location for the next cache was too far away to be able to supply their immediate needs.

What Addy had not told him - or rather, what she had not known - was that the water source they were going to was also surrounded by an elephant graveyard.

"I never thought they existed," Addy said, her voice sounding soft and almost strangled as Hound negotiated a winding path between weathered elephant bones. "I thought they were just legend, but..."

Hound, however, remained quiet, his CPU lost in memory. It reminded him of those scrap yards on Cybertron, where the shattered remains of those destroyed during the war were dumped before they eventually found their way to the smelters deep underneath Cybertron's surface. Scrap yards were a clear marker of a Decepticon-held area or city, because the Decepticons could never be bothered with properly seeing to the remains of those they had killed, unless the victim had something important that they could use.

Addy made a choking sound then, and it was only then that Hound's optics spotted the large elephant carcass lying not too far away from where they were, half-obscured by vultures. "Primus..."

"We have to move somewhere downwind from them," Addy said, her gaze fixed on the carcass. "It won't be long until the lions and hyenas find their way here."

"All right." Hound maneuvered amongst the bones, checking wind direction with his sensors to make sure that they were downwind from the carcass. He was certain that the ripe smell coming off of it must not have been very pleasant for Addy, so he made sure that he chose a direction where the stench would not reach her. Once they were in a good-enough spot, he let Addy unload the water containers and the little filter she used to make sure that the water was clean, and then transformed.

As it turned out, she was right about the lions and hyenas: not long after they had found a good-enough spot near the spring they had been gunning for, the distinct yip-yapping of the latter drifted to his audios, only to be subsequently drowned out by the roar of a lion pride closing in.

Up until this point, Hound had never seen the great predators of the Serengeti during a feeding. He had seen them hunt, certainly - he had watched the cooperative work that lionesses did in order to bring down a wildebeest or a buffalo; he had seen a cheetah streak swiftly over the grass to tumble a gazelle down to the ground. But he had never seen them feeding.

It was a gruesome sight. He watched as the lions' heads disappeared into the open belly of the elephant carcass, only to come up with huge hunks of flesh and their muzzles covered in blood. He could not stand to watch it, and he looked away almost immediately. The image it raised in his mind - a vicious Decepticon crunching its way through the internal systems of another Transformer, even as energon and lubricant leaked and dripped from various severed cables - made him feel rather nauseous.

Of course, he knew better than to imagine such a fate for one of his fellow Autobots, since no Transformer, Autobot, Neutral, or Decepticon, ever had to "feed" in the same way that organics did, but still...

"Does it disturb you?"

Hound's optics snapped to where Addy was standing, her eyes watching the feeding lions with a steadiness that surprised him. "Doesn't it disturb _you_?" he asked. Shouldn't _she_ have been troubled by the sight? After all, they were feeding on an elephant. A dead one, certainly, but an elephant nonetheless.

"If it had been hunted down by poachers, maybe, but I think it would be safe to say that the elephant died of natural causes." She straightened, and headed for the water. "What the lions are doing, what the hyenas and vultures and eventually the insects will do to that carcass, is all a part of a necessary cycle."

He listened as she told him about what she and other humans called the cycle of life, how living things are born, and when they die, return to the earth to nourish the next generation. It was an important and necessary part of life, not just on the Serengeti, but everywhere else - even amongst humans.

"But don't humans also believe in the soul?" Hound queried during a moment of silence. The lions had loped off at last, hyenas taking their place. "It's rather like our spark, but the human concept for it is very...complicated."

She laughed, and nodded. "Mostly because we tend to have different ideas about what happens to it after death." She seemed to sober up before continuing: "Some believe that, once we die, our souls are judged depending on whether or not we have led good lives, and then we are eternally blessed or eternally punished. Others believe that our souls come back, reborn over and over again, until we learn the lessons we must learn and can move on to a higher plane. And then there are those who believe that death is the end of it all, and that's that: nothing more beyond or after it."

They were quiet, the only sound that of Addy scooping water into a portable filter she brought everywhere with her. At length, Hound asked: "What do you believe in?"

Her answer took so long in coming that Hound suddenly wished he hadn't asked. He should have known better, should have remembered that talking about such things was a very sensitive topic amongst humans, and it was not something that one could just ask outright.

But she replied: "I believe that one day my body will turn into this." She lifted her hand, and Hound saw that she was holding some dust in it. He continued to watch her as she opened her hand, and let the wind carry the dust away. "But I also believe that I will become the acacia, the butterfly, the falcon, and the cheetah. I believe that, when I die, the dust that my body becomes will mingle with the earth, and from there, I can live a hundred million different lives, a part of every living thing that exists. When those beings die, they return to the earth, and they shall become part of another hundred million lives. And so the cycle continues, as it has since life came into being on this planet, and so it will continue, for as long as this planet exists."

He could see it: her spark scattering on the wind and then becoming a part of everything that lived and breathed, living again as a part of these beings, knowing a great and vast immortality for as long as this planet, and all the life on it, continued to exist.

It made his own spark dim suddenly, to think of her death. He watched her as she watched the vultures settle on the carcass again, and he realized that he did not like imagining her dead. How could he see her that way, when she stood nearby, vibrant and alive despite the death all around her?

He shook his head to clear his processors, trying to switch to his logic circuits. It was silly to be concerned over the possibility of her death. She was already close to halfway through the average human lifespan. Her active lifestyle and her optimistic outlook might give her a longer lease on life, but she would die in less than a vorn, if he had converted the Cybertronian time measurement correctly to reflect Terran years.

Then why did his spark dim even further at the thought?

"Hound."

He all but jerked when she said his name. "What?"

"We're done here. Let's go someplace else and make camp. It's starting to get late."

He nodded, and transformed back into his alt-mode. As soon as he did so, Addy loaded the water containers, and got behind the wheel. He started his engine up without her asking to, but he let her do the driving, because it allowed him to simply think without having to worry about the speed he was running at or the direction he was going.

After what just happened, there was much to think about.


	4. Scars

NOTES: I thought that this vignette would end up becoming an R-rated one, but as I wrote it, I realized that it didn't necessarily have to be one, so it has gone down to a PG-13.

* * *

**IV. Scars**

The water was cool and refreshing, and Hound could not help but utter a sigh of contentment. It had been a bit too long since he had last washed, and his trip through the Serengeti had already allowed a substantial amount of dust and dirt to accrue to him. It wasn't the most comfortable feeling in the world, so he was grateful when Addy suggested that they take a break and head to a place where they could wash up and rest without having to worry about night predators.

That place was some ways away from the main portion of the savannah, but had a spring so clear even Addy could see all the way to the bottom. Hound sighed with relief as he transformed and slid into the spring, watching the clear water ripple in the light of the late afternoon sun. Somewhere further downstream, a herd of hippos snorted and wallowed in the water, but they were far enough away not to bother noticing him and Addy. Their presence nearby merely added to the charm of this secluded hideaway: a reminder of where they were.

His audios picked up soft splashing behind him, a little further upstream, and he tensed slightly. He knew that was the sound of Addy getting into the water to bathe, and while he knew it was rather idiotic of him to be embarrassed by the idea of her being naked (Cybertronians, after all, didn't quite have a concept of nakedness - or at least, not in the same way that humans did), all the same, the idea of her without her clothing had been one that haunted him since that time at the elephant graveyard. It was intimately tied up to the fact that, somewhere between then and the current time, an emotion that he could not quite describe had crept up and bitten him in the aft, to paraphrase a human expression.

He lowered his optics to gaze at the water. Well, if he were to be honest with himself, he _could_ describe precisely what he was feeling - he just didn't want to give a name to it. Giving it a name made it real, and if that happened, he wouldn't know what to do, except perhaps sink into the depths of despair and frustration.

For the first time, his wish to be human became a longing so deep and powerful that it hurt.

"Hound?"

His head snapped back up at the sound of Addy's voice, even if he didn't look at her, couldn't bring himself to look at her. "Y-yes?" He mentally punched himself for stammering.

"Could I ask you for a favor?"

Judging from the splashing sounds she made, Hound deduced that she was wading over towards him. He off-lined his optics, glad that she could not see the expression on his face. "Sure."

The touch of her hand on his armor made his fuel pump stop short for a moment, before restarting at twice the speed. "Would you mind scrubbing my back for me?"

His optics came back online at the shock. What was he supposed to say to that? If he turned her down, then she would become suspicious about what was going on in his processors, and he was not at all prepared to answer any of her questions. On the other hand, if he did as she requested, then he would end up torturing himself.

"Hound?" She was moving around him so that she could look up at him. "Hound, are you all right?"

He shook himself out of his stupor. "Yes, I'm fine. And sure, I'll scrub your back."

"Oh! Thank you." She put a washcloth on his leg, and he heard her splash around a little more until the silence indicated that she had stopped moving.

Hound picked up the washcloth resolutely, trying to convince himself that there was nothing wrong with what he was doing, that it was in no way an indication of what he felt. Why was he so nervous anyway? It wasn't as if he had been asked to march straight into a Decepticon base and take it down all by himself, after all. He had been through much, much worse than this. With that thought circling his CPU, he turned around to face Addy - and stopped, optics widening involuntarily at the sight he saw. "Primus..."

He had always known that Addy was well-formed for a human female, the result of an active, healthy lifestyle. Her skin was pale where her clothing covered it, abruptly turning a darker shade where the edges of her clothing ended. She was long-limbed and lithe, very much like a gazelle in that respect. But it was not those attributes that caused Hound to stare at her: it was the scars that raked themselves across her back that did.

They were horrible, ugly, marring the perfection of her form. Hound, who could find beauty in the form of most any human, found the white web-work of tortured flesh that stretched itself across Addy's back to be horrifying and disturbing, hinting at some dark event in her past where she came close to losing her life.

"It's the scars, isn't it?"

Hound focused his optics on the back of Addy's head, noticing that she had not chosen to look over her shoulder at him. "Where did you get them?" he asked, his voice hushed, the after-effects of surprise and horror still bleeding out of his system.

"It was around five years ago, maybe six." Her voice, too, was quiet. "I was with a few friends of mine in South Africa. We were watching a baboon troop, since one of my friends was doing a study on them, and we were a long way from our transport. We were standing just downwind of them, watching them...and then something happened. I don't know. The wind turned the wrong way then, I guess. The next thing we knew, though, the baboons were running towards us. We ran, of course, but I wasn't running fast enough. I got pulled down and, well..." Her shoulder shifted slightly in a shrug. "I got these."

"Can't you get rid of them?" he asked softly, and realized soon after he had said it that it was a very stupid question to ask. Scars on human beings were nothing like weld-marks, which could be sanded down smooth and then painted over. Scars were permanent, unless one were to get surgery done to remove them, but such things were too expensive, and Hound knew Addy wasn't so vain as to want such surgery. "I'm sorry. That was a stupid question."

She laughed softly then. "It's all right. I don't suppose you and your kind get too many scars, do you?"

"We can get weld-marks and scratches and dents, but those can be hammered out or sanded down or painted over." A small smile quirked his lips then, remembering Tracks and Sunstreaker, who were very conscious about the way they looked. "Doesn't mean that some of us aren't vain about the way we look, though."

She laughed again, and he felt his spark warm to the sound of it. "I would imagine so." Her voice turned wistful. "There really is not much difference between your kind and mine now, is there?"

"No," Hound answered, his voice quiet and low. If only she knew just how much alike their species were in terms of personalities and emotions... He moved forward, the washcloth in one hand, and tentatively reached out with it before stopping short a few scant inches from her back. "Addy..."

"Yes?"

Had his audios malfunctioned, or had her voice tone changed somewhat? "I'm... Are you sure that the scars won't hurt if I-"

Laughter again, but it was kind, gentle. "They don't hurt anymore, trust me."

"... All right." Deciding that it was all or nothing, he gently applied the cloth to her back, and started to rub gently at the marred skin.

He did not know when it all changed. He did not know if it was when his audios picked up the rich sound of Addy purring in the back of her throat, or the moment when, acting on a whim, he traced the largest of the scars with the tip of his finger. All he knew was that, after some amount of time that was both maddeningly short and exquisitely long, he had gone from scrubbing her back to running his fingers over and along her body, committing every curve, angle, and change of temperature and texture to his memory. And she, in turn, let him, turning in his hands like those little dolls in those pretty music boxes, smiling at him with a light in her eyes that went straight to his spark.

All it had taken was that physical contact, and they _knew_. There had been no need for words. Even now, sitting next to each other by the fire with Addy, warm and content, leaning against his side, there was still no need for them. It was enough that what had gone unspoken for so long had found expression in its own way, and now that they both knew it, there was no need to hide it.

It was he who broke the silence, because there was a question that niggled at the farthest recesses of his CPU. "Addy, what do you think would happen if I was human?"

She looked up at him, her eyes gleaming softly in the firelight. "Why do you ask?"

He peered down at her, unafraid now to meet her gaze with his optics. "Because I know that there are problems with what we have. We cannot have the...intimacy that we might want to have with each other."

"Oh." She looked away then, staring at the fire, and then replied: "It would be lovely, if we were both of the same species, but... Well, we can only make the most of what we have - and believe me, what we have makes me very happy." She looked back at him, smiling. "And why should you wish to be anything other than yourself? You and I would not be where we are if it were otherwise, don't you agree?"

Her response cleared away the last of his doubts, and he smiled, nodding. "Yes, that's true."

They lapsed into silence again, but it was a contented silence, one that was secure in the knowledge of what they had, what they shared. And as Hound slipped gradually into recharge, the wide night sky over his head and Addy curled up on the patch of ground near the crook of his arm, he sent a heartfelt prayer to Primus, begging that this lovely, halcyon time never, ever end.


	5. Dust

NOTES: While reading this chapter, I advise listening to the song "Close Your Eyes" by Christopher Beck, from the _Buffy: The Vampire Slayer_ soundtrack.

* * *

**V. Dust**

The rising disk of the sun was greeted by a chorus of birdsong, underscored by the deep rumble of elephants and the roar of lions. Nearby, he could hear the quiet chitter-chatter of small mammals emerging from their dens, taking advantage of the early light to feed while their natural predators - usually reptiles like snakes and lizards - were still waiting for the full strength of day to warm them up. The zebra, gazelle, and wildebeest herds were stirring again, preparing for another long day of grazing.

Yet, in the midst of it all, Hound remained still and silent, his back to the sunrise, and his optics focused on the little ceramic jar he held in his hands. For an Autobot, the weight was really negligible, but to him, it weighed more than anything he had been ever made to carry.

The jar contained Addy's ashes, all that was left from the rather informal cremation ceremony done at Seronera. He had been late for that, but it was not his fault - not really.

He lifted his gaze to look at his shadow, which stretched long and wide across an expanse of savannah. It almost felt like an entire vorn since the last time he had spoken to her, even though he knew that it was only a few days. At that time, he and Addy were once more preparing to settle down for the night when his sensors picked up an unusual signal. When he focused on it, he realized that it was a Decepticon signal - one of the Seekers, that much he was sure, but it was hard to tell which.

He had turned to Addy then, but she was looking at him with a small smile on her face that did nothing to conceal the worry in her eyes. "It's them, I suppose?"

For the first time in his many vorns of dedicated service to the Autobot cause, Hound was torn. He knew that it was his duty to go after the Seeker, to find out what they were up to, and then radio in to his comrades, but he did not like leaving Addy behind. He considered taking her with him, but he didn't want to, either; it was too dangerous, and the last thing he wanted was for her to get caught in the crossfire.

But through that easy understanding that Hound found both strange and comforting, Addy knew his dilemma, and understood. She smiled and walked over to him, placing a hand on his forearm. "You have to go."

"I can't leave you here," he said, keeping his voice low to prevent it coming out hoarse.

"There is a ranger station not too far from here, only fifteen minutes away. You can leave me there for now." Her fingers squeezed gently, and though the pressure was light, he knew that it was meant to reassure him. "I will be all right."

At length, he nodded, and transformed, allowing Addy to break up her camp, pack up the equipment and her gear, and get into the driver's seat. Addy gave him the directions to the ranger station, and he took off in that direction at a tearing speed, making it there in good time.

He did not transform out of his alt-mode even when Addy had finished unloading her things. He wanted to, but time was of the essence, and he was just going to be wasting energy if he transformed.

Addy ran a hand over his steering wheel, and leaned forward to press her forehead against it, before finally dropping a light kiss onto it. "Please," she murmured, and Hound felt his spark flicker at the emotion in her voice, "please, come back safe."

"I will, I promise," he said, knowing that he meant every single word of it. He was determined to do his job well, so that he could come back and see her again.

She got out then, and he turned around, preparing to head off in the direction of the Decepticon signal, but then, he abruptly remembered something. "Addy, there's something I-"

"You can tell me when you get back," she said, her voice firm. "Make it your reason to come back safe."

He would have smiled, if he could, but in his alt-mode, he could not. Instead, he settled for repeating the promise he had made earlier on, and when Addy waved in farewell, he dashed off after the Decepticon signal.

The rest of it went off as planned around a Terran year ago back at the Ark. He tracked the Decepticon all the way to Mount Kilimanjaro, where he learned that Megatron was drilling holes into the mountain in a bid to reawaken the slumbering volcano and harness that energy to make energon cubes. He radioed the Ark, and was told to stay put and continue surveillance while the others flew over on Skyfire. This he did, carefully monitoring the Decepticons' movements until Skyfire finally arrived with his comrades.

From there, it was the usual routine: the Autobots engaged the Decepticons on Kilimanjaro, managing to defeat them and send them scurrying back to Megatron. The Autobots made sure that there was nothing dangerous left on the mountain, and filled up the holes that had been drilled. After that, the others boarded Skyfire to head back to the Ark, but Hound asked for a couple of days more so that he could see Addy. The others saw nothing wrong with that, and Hound gave Skyfire directions to Seronera so that he could come back later after dropping the others off back at the Ark, while he and Trailbreaker made their way back down to the ranger station where he had left Addy.

He could still remember how excited and happy he had been at the prospect of introducing Addy to Trailbreaker, certain that the two of them would get along famously. On the way down to the savannah, Hound filled Trailbreaker in on everything that had happened in the past year, about all the things that he had seen and enjoyed while with Addy, as well as about Addy herself. Trailbreaker had listened with a mixture of amusement and curiosity, at the same time enjoying the trip they made through the marvelous Tanzanian landscape.

But when they reached the ranger station where Hound had left Addy, all that greeted them was a smoking mass of wood and metal. One of the rangers on the scene recognized Hound, and told him what had happened: a group of poachers had attacked the ranger station without warning not a few days ago - the day immediately after Hound left, to be precise. At first, they were able to hold out, but the poachers had superior firepower, and it did not take them very long to overwhelm the station's defenses and get to everyone inside.

"But where is Addy?" Hound demanded, his systems vibrating with extreme worry.

The man was silent for a while, but length, he looked up, and replied: "Ms. Rowan was fatally wounded in the fight. She fought back, you see, took down three or four of them, excellent markswoman that she is..." He shook his head. "She was taken back to Seronera for medical treatment."

Hound knew that there was no time to lose. He and Trailbreaker raced to the Seronera settlement, praying as hard as he could that she would be alive when he got there.

It was all for naught. All that he had managed to reach was the scent of something burning on the wind, and the tail end of a cremation ceremony.

A hand squeezed his shoulder then, and Hound lifted his head to look at Trailbreaker, who gave him a small, sympathetic smile. "It's not your fault, Hound. You did what you had to do. You didn't know that the ranger station would be attacked."

"I know that," Hound replied, his voice sounding heavy even to his own audios. He looked at the jar he held in his hand, remembering how he had pleaded to have it, since Addy didn't have any family, and none of them knew how to contact any of her friends. "It's just... I wish I had some more time."

"Time for what?"

"Time to say things that we didn't _have_ to say to each other, but that I promised I'd say when I got back." He managed a smile then, but even he knew that it was a sad, half-hearted one. "You don't think I'm foolish, acting like this, do you?"

Trailbreaker shook his head, smiling. "No Hound. I don't." His expression became serious. "But we have to go. Optimus is waiting for us to go back and report on the situation."

"I know." She would have told him that he had to back, that much he knew. She would have told him to go, because she knew that he was needed elsewhere, that their bond had to take second place to something much, much larger than the both of them.

And he knew, with absolute certainty, that she would have smiled while watching him go, the same way that she smiled when he left her for the first and last time.

He turned to face the rising sun, savoring the warmth as he removed the cover from the jar. He waited for the wind to blow in just the right direction, and when it did, he upended the jar in one smooth motion. He watched as the gray ashes inside scattered to the wind, swirling and moving on the air before dissipating completely. As he did so, a flock of birds burst out from the trees, soaring and wheeling into the sky, while out on the plain, a cheetah raced after a gazelle, bringing it down in one swift, elegant pounce.

Her words at the elephant graveyard came back to him then, as if he had summoned the memory from the depths of his processors: _"...I can live a hundred million different lives, a part of every living thing that exists. When those beings die, they return to the earth, and they shall become part of another hundred million lives. And so the cycle continues, as it has since life came into being on this planet, and so it will continue, for as long as this planet exists."_

_For as long as this planet exists._ As long as Earth existed, as long as life on it continued to flourish and grow, she would still live too. And as Hound though more and more on that, he felt his spark grow lighter, and his quest to defend Earth alongside his fellow Autobots solidify and take on a more personal dimension. He would protect Earth, not simply because he was an Autobot, but also because he once loved a human woman named Adelaide Rowan, and in her memory he would fight to protect anything that she had held dear.

"Thank you Addy," he murmured, covering the jar again, and kneeling down to nestle it at the base of a nearby acacia. "I'll miss you, but I'll never forget you."

He turned to look at Trailbreaker, and nodded, the smile on his face warm, but wistful. "Come on, Trailbreaker. Let's go home."


End file.
